Q&A: Elke Chats Her Fairy love Tale “My Sweetheart” and Being A Natural Explorer
LA-BASED WORLD TRAVELER — Elke just released her latest single, “My Sweetheart.”
An extraordinary vibrance makes Elke’s new song feel more like an oil painting than a tune. Perfecting her craft in art rock once again, “My Sweetheart” contains clear instrumentations and a soothing glance at Elke’s ever-so-ephemeral vocals. Almost as if she’s dueting with herself, lower register parts are interwoven with an airy higher-pitch delivery, as Elke somehow manages to narrate a two-part romance all by herself.
Accompanied by a fantasy of a music video, “My Sweetheart” feels almost too good to be true. Featuring intricate light plays, gorgeous executions of camera works and, of course, brilliant colors and symbolism that overwhelm your senses, the video is a piece of fine art on its own. The song is more so an immersive experience, a moment. No matter the time and space you currently occupy, “My Sweetheart” will take you out of the mundane and sweeten up the deal of life for a brief instance.
A true ballad in nature, Elke does not derive from a certain idea but the pure thrill of love for the new single. “My Sweetheart” has a sense of simplicity that is so exhilarating and freeing in all sonic ways possible. Elke says it best herself: it’s love-drenched, indulgent, and beautiful.
Read below to learn more about “My Sweetheart,” what Elke has been up to recently, and what’s coming up next for the artist.
LUNA: Hi, Kayla! How are you doing in general? Tell me a little bit about your single in your own words?
ELKE: I’m doing really good! Actually, I’m in Nashville right now—
LUNA: I’m in Nashville! I moved from LA to Nashville last year, right around the time when you guys played that Halfnoise show.
ELKE: No way! Right on! There’s so many talented people here and a lot of close friends. We actually made this single in Nashville, during a snowstorm in January.
LUNA: That was a very nice snowstorm. Everything was white.
ELKE: Yeah! The backyard of the producer's house is [filled with] trees too, so it's just this wonderland out. That was such a cool thing. But yeah, that's when we recorded it. I co-wrote this song with Joey Howard. He's also a very dear friend of mine. He played at that Halfnoise show. We got together in 2020. We lived in LA in 2019 till in 2020 [when] COVID hit. We moved back to Nashville and now we're back in LA, but I’m visiting here right now — a lot of back and forth.
I had asked Joey, “Do you want to write a song together?” He was like, “I was just gonna ask you.” We were both quite stoked about doing that together. It's not something we've done, but he's played in my band for so long, even back to my first EP. He played on all of my music. We wrote this song with just his computer and his bass, just very simple. There was this morning when I woke up here, and in the living room downstairs there was this tiny patch of light — you know how fast light moves when it's beautiful? It was like, wow, it's already disappearing, like a sunset or something, but this is just the sunrise. I wrote this poem — I was very into writing poems at that time — and all in one shot I wrote this poem about sitting in this newfound beautiful patch of sun that I don't normally see. There were wrappers and blankets around the couch where I was sitting because Zac, my partner, and I were up the night before watching television, eating cookies, sipping on different drinks and just had such a cute little date night type thing. I was really really reminiscing in that feeling. It was just a very powerful moment of “Woah,” the same way that light was moving away so quickly, time can do that to you [too]. It was like I was sitting in a capsule… So that's where the lyrics came from. Sorry, I feel like I went on such a long tangent.
LUNA: No, that's the whole point of having an interview! I just finished watching the music video — there’s this almost classical painting [feeling], kind of reminiscent of that light moment in a very odd way. There are these Twilight Zone moments every morning where you wake up and you find little things in your house — I feel like that's usually light coming in from windows in Nashville.
ELKE: Great windows in Nashville.
LUNA: Is that the reason why the music video shows these little snippets and moments in the way that it presented it?
ELKE: Kind of. I told you I wrote that song in a straight shot, but usually I would write something and go over it and change it and kind of sculpt it into something that I know is done because it feels so right. With this one, I wrote this straight shot, [an] indulgent-type song, and post-writing I was like, “Wow, it’s so straightforward that it almost feels like a fairy tale.” It just felt so love-drenched. So I really wanted to amplify how, with love, there are so many things that come with it, it's not like the fairy tale where you never really see their relationship after the happy ending. I never want to cut love short of everything it takes to do it, you know what I mean? It takes a lot to maintain love and all those things. Given the fact that I was just so indulgent, it felt really right to have this Romeo-and-Juliet, just love-drenched [visual]. This video is built with my friend Payton [Newcomer], who’s a really talented set designer — she can do it all — and I. The only thing I told her was that I want to be like a fairy, and we just watched a couple of movies, got inspirations, and then made this concept of longing and dancing.
LUNA: It's very beautiful. I mean, I feel like all of your videos kind of remind me of David Lynch but this one in particular was like, “Oh yeah, David Lynch — a lot of it.”
ELKE: So fascinating that you say that. This is a new partner — I haven't done anything with Payton before — so I think that theme is always finding its way. I also gotta say to AJ Gibboney, who edits everything, too, he’s got such a good taste. He really makes something more artistic than it ever could have been, very detail-oriented — definitely plays a part.
LUNA: Who are some of your overall artistic inspirations? It doesn't even have to be a musician, but I would love to hear the music side of things too.
ELKE: It’s interesting, I'm in this weird transitional phase. All of these heroes [I had] growing up, I don't feel the same connection as I did with them. When I discovered them, they really filled me with all these new thoughts and inspirations. Now I'm very devoted to trying to listen to music that's being released now. I don't think that the new releases get the [right/enough] kind of attention, at least on the indie scale, because there's so much music coming out all the time. And I can just pick from this [selection] and be able to see it live and see somebody grow. It's a new kind of transitional phase. I haven't found anything specifically, but I will say that I am a new fan of Kate Bush. This has started in 2020, around the time that I started writing with Joey. We just got a piano in our house, it's like a baby grand. There's this really awkward spot in our house, it's just a big hallway and it was like, who do I put here? So we bought this cheap, baby grand piano and put it there. I started playing it a bunch and listening to Kate Bush. I guess she would be a new hero that I'm quite thankful for.
LUNA: Kate Bush during the pandemic must have been something.
ELKE: Oh, for sure. It really kind of does… She’s so into fantasy as well. I think it's interesting to get into somebody who dives deep into something that feels so fantasy-based because reality is very tough right now, especially 2020, and on and on. I've been very into fantasy type things, because the world is just kind of hard to cope with. And it's interesting how I feel like I want to be in nature all the time or feel like a different being that doesn't have to deal with the day to day news.
LUNA: Fully understandable. Let's see them. Since you do go from places to places very frequently and move around a lot, even since you were a kid, you’re always in this motion of looking for the next thing and looking for something to inspire you. How does that growing up experience play into how you approach art as an artist and how you take in art as a consumer of art?
ELKE: Definitely impacted it in a great way. I think it's also what you're saying: I seek it, I definitely am always looking. I'm so observant of my surroundings because I know that they're not always familiar, and I'm always trying to understand something to the fullest. So I guess that's a big trait that I have, and I’m always trying to find a home in something or a feeling like I know something that I made was good because I know that feeling so well. Maybe I go out in nature and I try to find this escapism land in my head, I go down this one trail and I find the place that I went there to look for — I'm hoping that this is making sense. But this actually happened, where I was walking in Shelby Park. I wanted to find something magical that day. I was like, “I'm just gonna go left this time.” It felt kind of like I was entering something [where] I had no idea was about to happen, and that's what made me keep going this way. There's something here. And then I just ended up going down this trail and there was a pond, but it had this kind of muddy path going throughout it. And as I [walked] up to it, there were, like, 20 turtles all scurrying into the water. There were so many turtles. Oh my god. I could not believe I just saw that. I have to trap it and remember that forever. So I'm definitely very curious, always wanting to go see places. I'm not really afraid of stirring the pot. I guess I wouldn't feel comfortable in the same place for very long.
LUNA: If you can use a word or phrase to describe the current stage that you're at as an artist, what would that be?
ELKE: So funny because I thought about this, I want it to be a positive word, and the word is “fearless.” I feel bad saying that though because I don't want to come off as like I… You know what I mean? But I really do feel that way where I could give two craps about the next music that I put out. I am just absolutely going for it. I'm not trying to play by any rulebook.
LUNA: And I notice that the whole Elke branding previously, or for the last few years, had a lot of greens in it. But now I'm seeing this blue/purple coming in. Is there any reason for it?
ELKE: I think it's coincidental for sure. I work with one of my design friends, he's very reactionary based off colors and feels very intuitive in that way. And No Pain For Us Here had a lot of greens in it because that was his interpretation with it. I would give him an album cover and he would just be like, I'm seeing a lot of this. For this next single, he also worked with me and was like, “I'm seeing purple.” Maybe it just made sense. I don't know.
LUNA: Do you personally associate colors with feelings at all?
ELKE: I'm actually quite bad with colors. I'm such a word person.
LUNA: I think it's so cool that for the song “Vacuum” and the whole backstory of it, you just somehow make it a very beautiful song that has a metaphorical meaning to it, when it's literally just vacuum. In “My Sweetheart,” it's also kind of the same thing. You really elaborate on one specific thing and push it out. What's your writing process? Do you usually just have an idea and expand it from that idea?
ELKE: Yeah, for the most part. At least with No Pain For Us Here and previously, I was pulling from a notebook where I would write one-liners that I've been collecting for years. I'd come up with a concept, I would just read through this list of all these things that I'd gathered in life. [For example,] “The Pink Tip Of A Match Turns Black” was a one-liner. I was writing about losing a friend and I was like, “This is perfect for that.” I remember coming up with that line in the kitchen of the friend — I lived with her. I remember looking at this matchbook and you can watch the match go. I just wrote that down. I don't really have a set way. Sometimes a song will just come to me. I don't really look at that book anymore, though. I still write down thoughts a lot, but it was very ritualistic to have this notebook at that time. I would write them down in my phone and always make sure that they go [in] this journal later. I still have it, it’s ripped to shreds. But now I'm a little bit more free-spirited.
LUNA: When I was reading your bio earlier, I noticed that you've been a performer for a very long time, and it only makes sense that your writing habit has changed over the years and evolved as a musician. What have you noticed that has changed over the years? And what do you want to do more as a musician in the near future?
ELKE: When I first started officially releasing music, I was writing more rock, slightly punk music — but not really, just because I was playing in a two-piece. Because I couldn't afford a band, really, [since] this was in New York. I was writing about things that I felt people would be scared to hear, like I would just write about things for shock value. There are some unreleased songs that I never put out. I would kind of go into the concept of sleeping with somebody and then you don't see them again. I was just trying to make some sort of poetry out of that moment. Moments that aren't as simple as love, or there are things in life that we experienced that can change or not change us, but they happen and they're weird. I want to get more into things that people might be afraid to sing about. I definitely want to expand on some different topics, especially in my own personal life. I don't really know how to approach that right now — I mean, I'm in a relationship. We've been dating for three and a half years — eventually I'm going to run out of things to say. I’d like to look deeper and be more honest with myself about some of the stuff that I really have to deal with in life that make it hard, even though I'm so blessed to have love and to have friends and we all get along. I would love to get back into that just to shake people up a little bit.
LUNA: Is “My Sweetheart” leading up to something bigger? What do you have coming next?
ELKE: I'm going to be releasing an EP. The theme of it is to be extremely inconsistent. No Pain For Us Here is this journey, and I want this EP to just be like, I'm feeling like this today, and then the next second I'm feeling like this, the next second I'm doing this. So yeah, each song has a completely different vibe and feeling. I want that so much. I want that in the world. I want to not have to worry about, like, “Whoa, I don't know if people are going to understand,” kind of like the fearless thing I'm thinking about. That's the whole point of this next EP, just to not overthink and not group things together.
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